


Symphonies Gone Wrong

by Shiphard



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Iron Man (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: But also not, Canon Divergence, F/F, F/M, Fem!Tony Stark - Freeform, Female Tony Stark, Genderbend, Look I'm a fucking ho for fem tony stark, Multi, Other, Rule 63, So this way I live through both of them, Sort of an MCU rewrite, and like my best gay life alright, but I'd also fuck Steve Rogers, leave me alone I'm dumb
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-28
Updated: 2019-08-28
Packaged: 2020-10-01 22:23:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20424173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shiphard/pseuds/Shiphard
Summary: Toni Stark built Iron Man. She built the Avengers. She built herself. How many people can say they're willing to tear themselves, their foundations, their families down for the world? One. Maybe two.She builds herself a home in a tower she built in a city she poured millions into. She builds herself a love in a man she unearthed, unwound, understood. And she builds a suit of armor around the world. And when all that breaks? When one man as out of time as her own resurfaces? When an alien who calls himself God takes tears her whole world down? It is Toni Stark who builds it all back up.From day one, from the birth of Iron Man to the death of Iron Woman, this is what the world looks like with Antonia Marie Stark as its guardian.





	Symphonies Gone Wrong

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so this ship has been near and dear to my heart since I was a smol child. Toni Stark has been one of the few things that gave me confidence from the very beginning. I'm so much gayer now than I was then and I know, I KNOW how heteronormative or cis-centric it is, but I put a lot of love into headcanons, interpretations, and subjective perspectives. Take this as you wish, see her as you wish. (I for one am all fucking for trans!Tony) But please know that a lot of love also went into this. Six years ago this was a fully-fledged and ff.net publish piece of hot garbage. Now I've given that new life and done my best to interpret the MCU as I thought little changes should be made and with a wonderful, powerful Toni Stark. Anyways enjoy. Or don't, I guess. Up to you.  
ALSO PLEASE NOTE THAT RIGHT NOW I'M ADDING MORE TO THIS CHAPTER I GOT TRIGGER HAPPY AND POSTED IT BEFORE IT WAS READY SO THERE WILL BE MORE SOON

Chapter One- Starks Are Made of Iron (With all the Forging that Entails)

Antonia Maria Stark was born four and a half weeks early. The doctors said it was because Maria was older and the stress of pregnancy had triggered an early labor. Howard took it as a sign that he’d been dealt the losing hand; no son, a baby that could barely breathe on its own, and a wife too far past her prime to give him another. Maria had tried to assuage him that everything would be fine, and he’d tried to believe her, but Howard Stark was not a man who often listened to his wife.

But she was a Stark and Starks were made of iron.

Antonia’s first weeks were spent in the hospital, inside a little chamber to help he lungs form and function. And day in and day out, Edwin Jarvis would sit beside the incubator, watching the infant struggle to breathe. And before he would leave every evening, he would place a gentle hand against the glass, fond eyes glinting with his characteristic warmth and murmur, “Be strong, my brave, brave girl.” Five weeks after her birth, Antonia raised a jerky fist to the glass, kicking her legs with all the ungainly control of a newborn. Her little knuckles press ed against the glass opposite Jarvis’s. The next day they brought her home.

Maria, Ana, and Jarvis all did the heavy lifting as far as raising her went. For a while, Howard seemed to revel in being a new father, enjoying watching her tiny little feet kick wildly and hearing her giggles when he’d pick her up and swing her across the room- much to Maria’s disdain. Once or twice he told her a story to lull her into sleep, tucking her in with her teddy bears and heavy blankets.

But iron wore and rusted over time and eventually Howard grew distant.

So Antonia fought for his affections. She came to him with her first invention at 4; a circuit board that Howard had designed and never assembled, but he’d frowned and said, “I scraped that design because it was inefficient and mediocre. Stay out of the workshop, Antonia.” At 5 she proudly displayed her tiny robot that she’d assembled with scraps she’d snuck from his shop. Except thirty-odd years of searching for a man- a friend, a project, a brother- to no avail and multitasking running a business and organizing a secret government agency had worn on Howard and his patience snapped at the nuts and bolts his daughter had pilfered.

“I told you not to go in my workshop, Antonia,” he snapped, taking the little robot from her. It whirred a little in his hand. “Look at all these parts I’ve been searching for! And what even does it do? For god’s sake, Antonia, do as you’re told!” He’d taken the robot, disassembled it before her, and idly grumbled at its uselessness, scowling as he did.

Antonia learned that day not to mess with her father’s things. So with her allowance, she bought tools of her own instead of dolls and gears and scrap metal from the junk yard instead of records and not long after, she brought her second invention to him. This time, at 7, presenting a functioning, if not cumbersome, computer. Even years later she would still remember the bland expression he stared at it with, watching as it whizzed and whirred and then spit out a sheet filled with calculations. When she’d showed Jarvis, because he saw everything she made first, he’d been wildly impressed, promised her ice cream as a treat for her success, but Howard merely set the paper down, muttered, “Very nice, Antonia,” in a voice lacking conviction, and walked away.

Margaret Carter had, since well before Antonia’s entrance into the world, been a close friend and frequent guest of the Starks. Maria adored her, spent every minute that Peggy wasn’t busy talking shop with Howard chatting, laughing, and frankly fawning over the woman. Not long after the war, in the early fifties, Peggy had asked Howard to walk her down the aisle, her own father had already gone and her brother dead from the war. And not long after, Daniel and Peggy named the Starks their son’s godparents.

She was a staple of Antonia’s life. Aunt Peggy’s visits were always a bright spot for the young heiress, and she reveled in seeing her unofficial cousins Steven and Angela. Peggy would always tell her stories of her adventures, regaling her with the war, with her undercover operations as an agent of SHIELD. She taught Antonia how to fight, took her on extravagant trips with her own family and sometimes without, and gave Antonia the first thing she really felt was her own; the name _Toni_.

Toni was 15 when she finished high school early, graduating, obviously, as Valedictorian, and packed up for MIT. Aunt Peggy and Daniel drove her there in the van Jarvis had borrowed from a friend of a friend just for the occasion. Maria had of course seen her off, eyes watering as she kissed her daughter on the cheek and said, “show them what Stark women are made of, darling.” And Jarvis, having wanted so desperately to go but was busy caring for his ailing wife, had taken her by the hand, smiled gently, and said so softly only she could hear, “Be strong, my brave, brave girl.” Two months later, she returned home for Ana’s funeral, weeping more in her life for one woman than she ever had for herself.

When she returned to school, driven back by a tired, grieving, maudlin Jarvis, something had changed for her. Howard had taught her to expect disappointment, but Ana had taught her to demand respect. Like a star gone super-nova, a light in Toni’s already dim sky winked out.

The fraternity parties at MIT’s Sigma Epsilon and Kappa Sigma chapters were outrageous. She was sixteen when she found her way into one and ended up puking her guts out in their hedges three hours later. But one of the brothers, Tiberius Stone, had taken a shine to her and taught her how to hold her liquor. Some time after, she started getting phone calls from her mother about the reputation she was making for herself. She laughed it off and said she knew what she was doing every time. But it was more than that. The campus had demonized her; the students didn’t like how young she was, the professors thought her father paid her way in, and just about every woman on campus thought she was a burgeoning harlot- so much for sisterhood in the eighties. The parties, the drinking, even the occasional drugs were one big escape for her, a little moment in time where she wasn’t some pariah.

She was 17 when Jarvis arrived on campus and found her passed out in the Sigma Ep house in a puddle of her own vomit, left on the bathroom floor by one of the brothers who had thought it was funny run his hands up and down the curves of her body- until she puked on his shoe. Jarvis had, after stealing one of their towels to clean her off and another to wrap her in, quietly escorted her out of the building and to the car. When he returned later, he calmly stepped into the house, though underneath he was possibly the most enraged he’d ever felt, threatening the brothers with expulsion and financial ruin if they ever so much as even looked at Antonia Stark again. But she never found out about that, instead she’d spend the rest of her life thinking he’d gone back for the little jade hair pin her mother had given her. Tiberius Stone stopped talking to her after that day.

At 18, she met James Rhodes, who was 5 years older than her and nicer than any man on campus she’d ever met. He was pursuing an engineering degree, similar to her, and, during one of their classes, politely asked if she’d like his notes from the day before. Life alongside James Rhodes was easy, easy like she’d never really known. They laughed together like she hadn’t with anyone else and he didn’t treat her like some cockroach trespassing on campus. More often than not they would end up in the dining hall late into the night, studying and feasting on cereal from the dispensaries and the near-constant supply of gummy worms he seemed to always have. She helped him with his classes and he made sure she ate, slept, stayed away from the fraternities and the rumor mill. When his family would visit they would take her to lunches and dinners and his younger sister Jeanette would tease them endlessly. It was a nice change from her own family where she didn’t know what a happy, jovial meal was and had grown used to dinners spent largely in silence.

She graduated with honors and made Valedictorian with ease a year later. At her own graduation dinner, she announced she would stay to pursue a dual master’s in physics and electrical engineering. And with life so easy and uncomplicated with Rhodey, she expected him to say the same, because for the last year and a half they’d been inseparable. But the next night, when he pulled her aside at his own celebration- Roberta had made some kind of casserole and Jeanette had even made a cake, elaborately decorated with the words _Congratulations on Graduation Toni and Stinkface_\- he told her, with the straightest, soberest face she’d ever seen him wear, that he was joining the air force. She could still remember her face falling, hands balling into fists at her side.

“Why didn’t you tell me earlier?” she demanded.

“Because I didn’t know how to. This is something I want to do. I went to college, I did that, and now I can fly, like my dad did.”

She put on a good face for the rest of the night, but she left the Rhodes house without speaking to James. It wasn’t until he was leaving for officer’s academy that she raced up to him, throwing her arms around his neck, and murmured, “Die and I’ll kill you, Rhodes.”

She was 20 when her name appeared in half the newspapers across the country for being spotted locking lips with a senator in D.C. Except no one had asked for her side of the story, no one cared that she was there for Stark Industries business as she found herself growing more and more involved with the company. No one cared that the senator had bought her a few too many drinks and whispered promises of more funding for the company in her ear. No one cared that she thought what she was doing would help her father. No one cared. Howard didn’t call her at school again, he didn’t meet with her when she visited, but she was certain she’d heard the word _whore_ muttered in the background when her mother had called once.

Then, she was 21 when she went home for Christmas for the last time. She was 21 when she heard her mother’s dulcet singing for the last time, deft fingers striking each piano key with a precision she’d never mastered for the last time. 21 when she fought with her father for the last time, scowling when he reprimanded her for making a scene with a _woman for god’s sake, Antonia, have you no decency_. 21 when her mother ran a loving hand down her cheek, smiled sadly, and said, “He does miss you when you’re gone,” for the last time.

The call didn’t come from Peggy- she was in Moscow playing spy for SHIELD- and in fact there was no call at all. Instead, Jarvis, kind, loving, loyal old Jarvis, walked somberly into her father’s office where she was reading _A Brief History of Time_ for the third time with her feet kicked up on the desk. She knew as soon as she saw those sad eyes what he was going to say, those were the eyes that had stared back at her when she came home for Ana’s funeral, that he’d regarded her with when he found in her the Sigma Ep house bathroom. Those sad eyes told her everything she needed to know. She didn’t even hear when he said, “Toni, there’s been an accident.”

Peggy came home as soon as she heard, and she took care of the funeral arrangements with Jarvis’s help. Steven and Angela came back from their respective lives to sit with Toni while she stared at nothingness for three days straight. Daniel held her hand when they picked out caskets. And when they lowered her parents’ bodies into the ground, Jarvis slipped his hand into hers and whispered, “Be strong, my brave, brave girl.” Aunt Peggy and Daniel stayed in the manor with her for a few days after, and Rhodey flew home to be there for her during the whole ordeal, but for the first time in her life she had nothing to say and no love to give. Howard was gone and he’d taken her mother with him.

Howard Stark was gone.

The man made of iron had finally rusted away into nothing, shattering the crystalline woman that had been at his side the whole time, stronger than steel and sharper than cut glass.

Howard Stark, who had spent her whole life bemoaning her existence, dwelling on a man long since lost, and neglecting the life he’d vowed to keep in sickness and in health, for better or worse, parting only at death.

She threw every bottle of liquor in his office at the wall after Aunt Peggy and Daniel left, drank two of them before she shattered them, and curled up on the floor sobbing until Rhodey found her and carried her back to her bed. He stayed with her that night, sitting at the foot her bed watching carefully as she first cried herself to sleep, then breathed shallowly all through the night. There had been times at MIT where he’d done the same, minus the tears mostly, for fear that maybe she’d drunk herself to death, that at some dark moment in the night she would just stop breathing.

Starks were made of iron; forged in fire, shaped by sheer force, and quenched in liquor.

Three years later, she ascended to the position of CEO at Stark Industries, guided by her father’s closest friend and the only good thing she associated with Howard Stark; Obadiah Stane. He streamlined her ascension, made the process of integrating her new designs go smoothly, and helped keep all the stories on the front of the tabloids from plummeting their stocks. She thought she might love Obie, maybe like a father, because he’d been good to her when she was young and because when he called her pretty and brilliant she thought he really meant it.

And three years after the death of her parents was also when Virginia Potts walked into her life. She was an accountant that the company had swept out from under some think tank, but had quickly wormed her way into Toni’s good graces seemingly by accident. She’d seen something in the young woman with carrot orange hair and freckles like cayenne pepper when the latter came bustling into her office with corrections on a report the Stark heiress was about to present to the board. Without even thinking she’d said, “Good, you’re my new personal assistant. Janet, you’re fired. Walk with me, Pepper.”

For a while, things were good for Toni Stark. She was the billionaire CEO of a Fortune 500 company, innovating technology alongside the giants like Microsoft and Apple while still hammering out military contracts in such a large volume she was worried they might have to actually turn some down. She attended galas, spent exorbitant amounts of money on hideous art so kids in the Bronx could eat or something, and went home with a new forgettable face every night. She’d let herself harden like the iron she was made from, grew cold to the world, and took advantage of every privilege life had given her. But time was not a merciful mistress and six months past the new millennium, the hospital called.

The tabloids theorized that the board of directors at SE had committed her to the psych ward, or that she was spending an extended stay in the hospital for _a special procedure_, which she’d expected but it almost hurt worse when they couldn’t even imagine she might have human emotions and attachments. She stayed at Jarvis’s bedside the whole time he was there, holding his hand all the while and reading him passages from their favorite books- _Watership Down, Travels with Charlie, __Cannery Row_. When Peggy and Daniel arrived, they sat with him too, and Peggy and Jarvis recounted their favorite adventures together. And one night, three and a half days after his heart attack, Toni watched as his heart rate steadily began to falter. She held his hand, telling him how much she loved him and how much he meant to her, as he struggled to catch his breath. Then, wheezing slightly, he clasped his own hand on top hers and murmured, “Be strong, my brave, brave girl.” When the deafening tone that came with his last breath resounded in her ears, she wept for the first time since her mother died.

Toni Stark was made of iron, but even iron grew weak.

Any holes in her armor disappeared with Jarvis, with Aunt Peggy’s memory- “Where’s Edwin, Toni? I want to say goodbye before we leave.”- with Rhodey when he left once again for active duty. Toni Stark learned not long after the passing of the only real father she’d ever known that she was alone, she would always be alone, and that no one could change that.

Iron was cold and unyielding, after all.

In 2004, the tabloids had a hay-day when Toni Stark was checked into a private hospital for an overdose. James Rhodes flew halfway across the world a day later and they theorized that he was a jilted lover, disappointed with his woman’s decisions in his absence. The truth was she was sick of being a CEO, being alone, being cold and unyielding, and she stared at the NyQuil in her cabinet with resignation in her eyes. The truth was she wanted an escape from designing weapons, from taking someone new home each night, from the rumor mill churning out a new lie about her every day. When she woke up in the hospital, Rhodey was holding her hand and Pepper was sitting by the window, but even if she wasn’t alone, she felt more isolated than ever before.

Toni Stark drowned out her afflictions with more than one cocktail a night. The new bombs she designed late into the night looked less like WMDs and more like something innovative and revolutionary with every swig of whiskey she took. The judgmental looks the board members gave her started to look more approving with every new lethal toy she gave them. The title _Merchant of Death _became more a badge of pride every time she told herself she was the architect not the agent. And all the while Obie was at her side, not frowning at her the way Pepper did, not sounding worried like Rhodey when he called from Afghanistan or Iraq or South Asia.

Time was cruel and power, jealously was crueler.

“I feel like you’re driving me to a court martial, guys. This is crazy,” Toni said, straightening the color on her suit. “What did I do? I feel like you’re going to pull over and snuff me. Are you not allowed to talk?”

The Humvee radiated tense silence until the soldier in the passenger seat said, “We can talk, ma’am.”

“So it’s personal?”

Then the one in the driver’s seat glanced at her from the rearview, sunglasses obscuring the look in their eyes. Toni’s gaze narrowed curiously.

“You intimidate them, ma’am.”

The voice was distinctly feminine, which sent a pleased shock through Toni’s spine. Of course there were women soldiers, she just hadn’t expected one to be driving her. Fucking internalized misogyny.

“Well shit, you’re a woman! I couldn’t have called that, honestly, but God bless America I guess. That’s what we’re going for, right? Thinking of you as a soldier first?”

The woman smirked a little and Toni caught it in the mirror, which elicited a little smile of her own.

“I’m an airman, ma’am.”

“Ah, well, potato po-taht-oh,” she said, then leaned in a little closer. “You know, now that I’m looking, you have excellent bone structure. Actually, I’m having a hard time not looking at you, now. Is that weird?”

The three soldiers in the Humvee chuckled a little and she grinned. _See Rhodey, this _is_ the Funvee_. She clapped her hands together.

“Good, great, it’s okay, laugh!”

The soldier in he passenger seat twisted around and seemed to chew his lip for a second before saying, “Ma’am, I have a question to ask.”

“Shoot.”

“Is it true you went 12 for 12 with last year’s Maxim cover models?”

Her grin widened and in the same moment the driver smacked her kin’s shoulder, grumbling, “Wright, what the fuck?” Toni waved her off, still smiling. No one could believe that she managed it, but if you were a billionaire, and a pretty one at that, even the straightest ladies were willing to experiment a little.

“Yes and no, what was it? Wright? Yes and no, Wright. March and I had a scheduling conflict, but fortunately the Christmas cover was twins. Anyone else?”

Beside her, the soldier who had spent the ride in terse silence thus far raised his hand. When Toni’s gaze shot over, he faltered sheepishly but kept his hand up, even when she said, “You’re kidding me with the hand up right?” Then she sighed and gestured for him to speak, like a professor giving permission.

“Is it cool if I take a picture with you?”

Toni laughed.

“Yes, it is very cool.”

Rushing, the soldier pulled out a camera and handed it to Wright in the front seat, leaning closer to Toni to get a good angle. He held up his fingers in a v-shaped peace sign, smiling wide as Wright futzed with the camera a little.

“I don’t want to see this on your MySpace page,” Toni joked, then added, “Please, no gang signs.” As the soldier put it down, smile fading a little as he thought he’d done something wrong, she said, “I’m kidding, throw it up. Yeah peace, I love peace, I’d be out of a job for peace, but I love peace.” Wright was still futzing with the camera which seemed to agitate the soldier beside Toni; he muttered something at the front seat soldier before a sudden, deafening explosion ahead of them sent the leader Humvee flying.

Toni’s eyes were as wide as golf balls when she saw the wreckage left by whatever IED had just targeted them. Gunshots resounded around them and the woman in front slammed the brakes, shouting something that Toni wasn’t even processing. The two up front opened their doors and climbed out, but before she could even unsling her gun, the driver was thrown back and disappeared from Toni’s sight. Wright leaned in the vehicle and said, “Jimmy, stay with Stark!” He slammed the door shut, ran towards cover, but fell backwards with a spurt of blood from his neck before he could reach it.

Toni had known she was selling weapons to support this war and many others, she’d always been aware. That didn’t mean she was happy about it; she’d gone to MIT to innovate technology and energy and the science world as a whole, not to blow shit up. But Stark Industries had made it very clear when she ascended to the position of CEO that they made WMDs, that they were a military contractor first and a tech company second. She spent the last ten years downing three or four or five glasses of whiskey a night just to keep that mill running. Now she was staring at the full effects of that work and people were dying, people she’d just been talking to, joking with less than a minute ago.

Jimmy, the soldier beside her, clapped his hand down on Toni’s shoulder, pushing her towards the foot well of the Humvee.

“Stay here,” he hissed.

“Wait! Wait, wait, wait, whoa! Give me a gun!” she cried after him, but he was already out the vehicle and raising his rifle. She peeked up over the dashboard just in time to see a round of bullets pierce his armor, his clothes, neck, legs, arm, and then go sailing past him into the car. She yelled instinctively and ducked.

Turning a bit, she’d looked out the rearview window and saw the three other Humvees behind her. Rhodey was in one of those. If she could just get to his, she’d be fine. Rhodey had spent the last two decades in the military, flying planes, shooting guns, killing people, and he’d survived all of it. He’d survive this too. She’d survive this if she could just get her dumb ass back to him.

Suddenly, thinking of turning him away from her own Humvee, she felt the burning sensation of tears in the back of her throat.

_“Alright, well that went well!”_

_ The crack of Toni’s hands clapping together felt like a sonic boom._

_ “Who wants to ride with me? Jimmy?”_

_ The soldier stared at her with wide eyes._

_ “Me?”_

_ Approaching slowly behind her, Rhodey laid a gentle hand on her shoulder, making her twist around to get a better look at him. He opened his mouth to speak, but she held up a finger._

_ “Ah, sorry Sourpatch, but this is the funvee, the hum-drum-vee is back there.”_

_ He frowned but she shrugged off his hand and climbed into the Humvee before her, thumbing the play button on her Starkphone. ACDC blasted in response and she gave him a smug grin._

If she died here, her last exchange with Rhodey would’ve been shirking him off. Panic filled her chest.

Without thinking, she opened the door of the Humvee and slid out, resting against the tire. When she looked around frantically, she was met with the airman who’d been driving the car. Her eyes were blank and she was laying in a growing puddle of blood. Toni’s chest tightened even more and she realized she was struggling to breathe.

A dull thud startled her and she looked over to find a bomb embedded in the ground a handful of meters away. She stared at it, wide-eyed and not breathing. Emblazoned on the side in that trademark font was the words _Stark Industries_. Her own creation was staring her down like a hunter at the dictating end of a rifle and she was the deer. She counted the seconds waiting until she could feel safe again, and at 5 she let out a suffocating breath.

Then everything was black and she felt like she was flying.

_“Toni, get up.”_

_ “No.”_

_ “Toni, it’s 3:46 in the afternoon and you have to be at the ceremony in three hours to accept your award.”_

_ Toni cracked her eyes open and was met with the fire-orange hair and green eyes of Pepper Potts, face contorted into a deep frown._

_ “Toni, please. We don’t have time for this.”_

_ “I don’t want to go.”_

_ “You have to.”_

_ “Get Obie to accept it for me. It’s just another fucking clap on the back for making the biggest explosions.”_

_ Pepper scowled._

_ “It’s the Apogee award, Toni, this is to commemorate your success in life. _Your_ being the operative word. Now get up.”_

_ “Five more minutes.”_

_ Pepper huffed angrily and threw her hands to her sides._

_ “This is the worst way to spend my birthday.”_

_ “Birthday?”_

_ “Yes. My birthday. Now get up, as a present for me.”_

_“Three hours.”_

_ “I got caught doing a piece for Vanity Fair, what can I say?”_

_ Rhodey’s look of disapproval was mixed with that characteristic frown of anger and disappointment. He’d used it a couple time on her in college. She gave him an unapologetic pout._

_ “Three hours you got me standing here.”_

_ She trotted past him, accepting a flute of champagne from the stewardess, then winked at the woman before gesturing for Rhodey to follow._

_ “Waiting on you now, honey bear. Let’s go, wheel’s up! Let’s rock ‘n’ roll!”_

_ Rhodey followed her up the stairs begrudgingly and, for the first hour of the flight was silent. She hung herself over the back of his seat._

_ “What’re you reading, platypus?”_

_ “Nothing.”_

_ His voice was a low rumble. Toni pouted._

_ “Come on, don’t be mad.”_

_ “I told you, I’m not mad, I’m indifferent, okay?”_

_ Sighing, she swung herself into the seat beside him._

_ “I said I was sorry.”_

_ “And I said I’m indifferent.”_

_ The stewardess appeared with hot towels, but Toni waved her off._

_ “I told him I was sorry.”_

_ “Toni, you don’t respect yourself.”_

_ “I respect you.”_

_ He shook his head and turned away from her._

_ “I’m your babysitter, and you’ve never respected those.”_

Toni came to briefly in a dark room. From what she could tell, there were men around her, an older doctor of some sort tensely staring, then shouting orders. And then the world faded once more.

When she woke again it was in a dimly lit room. It was cold, enough so that she could see the clouds of her breath. Then, slowly, she processed the feeling of something blocking her sinuses and she struggled for a moment until her hand came to rest on a tube protruding from her nose. Panic settled in her and she yanked on it, pulling it from her face until it popped out with a sickening amount of struggle. Throwing it aside, she used the moment to rub the feeling from her nose, then rolled.

Her eyes adjusted slowly until she found a glass of water on a table near her. She reached but it was still too far and the more she strained the more resistance she felt on her chest until there was a sharp pain.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

Her gaze shot up and came to rest on the reflection of an older man, wire-rimmed glasses and all, in a cheap shaving mirror. He continued about his business, looking oddly at ease given that she was hooked up to a car battery and they were both in some kind of dungeon in the middle of fuck-knows-where.

“What the hell did you do to me?”

The man frowned, then adjusted his glasses.

“What I did? What I did saved your life.” Then he finished shaving, set the razor down, and turned to face her. “I removed all the shrapnel I could but there was still a lot left and it’s heading towards your atrial septum. I have a souvenir, take a look.” He reached over to a shelf and grabbed something, then approached her, holding out a little metal shard.

Toni took it from him and studied it for a long moment before fully processing that that had been inside her body. Then she frowned. That had come from a Stark Industries explosive. She had nearly killed herself without ever intending to do so. And she’d been responsible for that, then she would also have been responsible for every life her bombs took, American or not. She could feel the pain in her chest tighten, like a phantom hand was gripping her lungs, heart and squeezing _hard._

“I’ve seen many wounds like that before in my village. We call them the walking dead because it takes about a week for the barbs to reach the vital organs.”

Toni followed the cords of the car battery again, then pulled the neckline of the tank top down just enough to reveal loosely wrapped gauze. In the same moment that she started ripping at the bandages, her hands started shaking. She pulled until the gauze ripped and came apart and then revealed a thick, ugly metal core bored into her chest. Her breath hitched in her throat and she was suddenly at a loss, either in shock or denial.

“What is this?” she said, voice shaking only a little.

“An electromagnet hooked up to a car battery. That is the only thing keeping those little bits of shrapnel from reaching your heart.”

Toni stared at the janky set-up for a moment longer, then began to realize what the man had really done to her. It was near ingenious. He’d removed her sternum and adjusted her lungs to fit a metal casing in to house a stupid-powerful magnet that would not only keep her heart beating but keep the metal inside her from stopping it. It was something she would’ve thought of.

The moment was lost when she glanced around to get her bearings and instead was met with cameras at nearly every vantage point. They were prisoners. And if the old man was in here too then he was likely not the one holding her, which meant whoever was likely didn’t bear his same kindness.

The old man had started to cook something on an old camp stove, but glanced back at her right as she was processing the presence of the cameras. He frowned.

“That’s right; smile.” Then he turned back to his cooking. She could feel the panic start to take over her mind, body. If she was even remotely less smart she would’ve started screaming, demanding help. But she wasn’t, she already knew that she was royally fucked, screaming wouldn’t help. But before she could process anything more, the man said, “You know we met once. At a conference in Bern.”

She paused. His face was entirely unfamiliar.

“I… I don’t remember.”

The man laughed.

“No, you wouldn’t. If I had been that drunk I wouldn’t have been able to stand, much less give a lecture about integrate circuits.”

Toni smiled a little, then glanced around again and seemed to come back to herself.

“Where are we?”

A sudden sound at the door drew the old man’s attention and he leaned over enough to see the metal door swing open. Quickly, he flicked off the stovetop then rushed to her side and pulled her up, yanking hard despite the fact that she literally had a fucking car battery roped to her. He looked at her with a feral intensity in his eyes. She knew that look, it said _survive_.

“Come on stand up, stand up,” he said as he hauled her all the way to her feet. Then he said, “Just do as I do. Put your hands up.”

Not quite understanding, but getting that there was at least a level of urgency to the situation, she held her hands up over her head and watched, suddenly, as a dozen or so men filtered into the room. Each was armed with a rifle that she recognized clear as day. Those were her guns. She had designed them with a high-powered barrel narrower than most for a higher pressure output than other rifles. Those were her fucking guns. She scowled.

“Those are my guns, how did they get my guns?”

The old man leaned closer to her and hissed, “Do you understand me? Do as I do.”

And then, a man appeared in the center of the small militia, looking ecstatic as his eyes fell neatly on Toni. She felt herself wanting to adjust the thin shirt she wore. For a moment everyone was quiet, then the ringleader smiled and threw his hands up. He spoke suddenly and it filled the room, voice echoing off the walls. She didn’t know what he was saying, just that he seemed to think highly of his own voice as he espoused it.

She was almost startled when the old man leaned over to her and relayed, “He says ‘welcome Antonia Stark, the most famous mass murderer in the history of America.’ He is honored.” There was a short pause and then the ringleader’s unfurled a blown-up photograph of her, standing beside the Jericho missile in almost the exact same pose the ringleader had just portrayed. “He wants you to build the missile. The Jericho missile you demonstrated,” the old man continued.

For the first time in a long time she was sober enough to understand the full implications of the missile she’d made. And what it would mean if these men got one.

“I refuse,” she said, not taking her eyes off the leader.

She was grabbed by the shoulders before she even knew what was going on, and the old man was pushed aside. Someone shoved the battery into her arms and in the same moment a bag was thrown over her head. They hauled her out of the room, or so she assumed, and she could feel the tight grip of several men on her as they shoved her onward. A sinking feeling settled into her stomach; she wasn’t dead but she was going to wish she was.

When the hood was pulled off her, she barely had a second to think before her head was submerged into a freezing tub of water. The air left her lungs as she was held down. It was only for a few seconds, but a hundred thoughts were racing through her mind. They pulled her back up, giving her far less time to breathe again before plunging her back into the tub. She choked. Time was somehow both so slow she could process every thought and emotion she had and too fast for her to even recognize it had passed before they pulled her out and shoved her back in again.

Somewhere in her mind she heard Obadiah’s voice saying, _“Starks are iron, Toni, I never doubted you’d be anything less.”_

They pulled her up again, but instead of immersing her, a hood was once again thrown over her head and she was roughly escorted out of the room. They were taking her somewhere else; they made different turns and rounded different corners. Behind her she could hear the old man protesting only once.

A few steps later and she could suddenly feel the warmth of the sun and the chill that had hung on her was gone. The hood came off, blinding her with the bare sun after however long she’d spent in that fucking cave. She looked around. There were men everywhere, filing in and out of stick-pole shelters covered with desert camo, and under every shelter was a pile of missiles, bombs, explosives. It would’ve been enough to make the US contractors piss themselves in excitement. A few days- hours? Weeks? How long had she been under?- ago she would’ve taken joy in seeing that many weapons in one place, granted she’d also have been on her third glass of Macallan scotch.

The leader was speaking again, saying something he seemed rather proud of. Then the old man was deposited next to her, someone barked something at him, and he said, “He wants to know what you think.”

Toni scowled but did her best to hide it. She was getting the impression that resisting these men would be a dumb idea.

“I think you got a lot of my weapons,” she replied, but her voice was soft, almost disappointed. She created this monster, even if she hadn’t distributed them or peddled them or hit the big red launch button, she’d made these.

The man went back to monologuing, but her heart was too busy sinking, and her mind too busy regretting.

“He says they have everything you need to build the Jericho missile. He wants you to make a list of materials. He says for you to start working immediately and when you’re finished he will set you free.”

There was no way around this. For now she would have to comply, figuring out a way to stall or get help or escape would have to come later. The gravity of the situation had begun to set it; a dead Toni Stark couldn’t solve this mess.

She reached out and shook the leader’s hand, smiling a little to appease him.

“No he won’t,” she said to the old man.

The old man smiled in return.

“No he won’t.”

Before the hood went over her head again, she found herself fixating on the small gathering of men in the distance. They were bearing her rifles, watching the exchange like whatever the leader was saying would be judged as well. There was a man in the middle, bald and sharp in the features. He watched her even closer. A feeling built up in the back of her head that whoever the man in front of her was, he was no more a leader of this organization than Toni was a free woman.

Toni had resigned herself to starving to death. It wasn’t glamorous but there were no knives in the room and they hadn’t yet brought her tools. She had made good with her sins; spoken to whatever entity had condemned her there and asked it to let Rhodey know she loved him and Pepper that she had desperately wanted something better between them. She murmured her goodbyes in the dark of night before falling into an uneasy sleep, told Obadiah she was grateful for him and the board to go fuck itself.

Now she was sitting before a fire the old man had lit- having never bothered to learn his name- and watched as the flames presaged what was waiting for her when she really did starve to death.

Except the old man was becoming more of a barrier to her suicide than she had expected.

“I’m sure they’re looking for you, Stark,” he said, having not stopped talking since she muttered about hoping Rhodey didn’t have to see her body. “But they’ll never find you in these mountains. Look, what you just saw out there, that’s your legacy. Your life’s work in the hands of those murderers, is that how you want to go out? With this as your last act of defiance of the great Antonia Stark-”

“That’s not my name,” she snapped, suddenly coaxed out of her pity party. “Only my mother called me Antonia. My name is Toni.”

The old man nodded approvingly.

“Then is this the last act of Toni Stark, or are you going to do something about it?”

She looked over at him, pulling the ratty beanie off her head and letting the burned and greasy locks fall around her face. She felt like a wild dog.

“Why should I do anything? They’ll kill me and you either way and use my weapons just like everyone else has; to murder. And if they don’t I’ll probably be dead in a week anyways.”

The old man sighed.

“Then this is a very important week for you, isn’t it?”

When she rested her gaze on his, she saw the same kind of understanding she’d seen in Jarvis and in Peggy and Daniel. There was a man there who genuinely believed she was more to the Merchant of Death, that she wasn’t just a drunk and a party-girl, that the conscious she’d tried so hard to bury wasn’t as dead as she had once hoped.

Finally she nodded.

It wasn’t much longer before there were men hauling explosives in, shrapnel they’d collected, and whatever other odds and ends they thought she might need to build a bomb. She was surrounded by four or five armed men and the man pretending to be the leader. The old doctor was beside her as well, holding her battery and translating whatever she said.

By the end of it, after making all her demands and finally feeling at least a little in control, her nerves began to calm. Toni Stark wasn’t going to die in a fucking cave. Toni Stark was made of fucking iron and iron never bent nor broke under the weight of lesser alloys. She would pick herself up and be every bit the woman her mother and Jarvis and Ana and Obadiah and even Howard had forged her as.

So after all the men had filtered out and she’d found a corner of the cave where the prying eyes of the cameras couldn’t see what she was studying, she laid out sheets of tracing paper and began to sketch the beginnings of something much different than a Jericho missile. Sometimes her hands would shake and she’d have to close her eyes, search for the voice of her guardian, hear Jarvis say, _“Be strong my brave, brave girl_,_”_ and coax herself back into calm.

There was no time to think about what would happen after, anything that came after was a luxury. She wondered if her father had ever felt that same determination, that the only thing that mattered was the now. Except his now had never ended.

His name was Yinsen. He told her so over games of backgammon. He had been captured by these men well before she had, to mend their broken soldiers. He told her the organization was called the Ten Rings and they had been lording over this section of the unsupervised and unpoliced Afghan desert for years. Yinsen was from a neighboring village called Gulmira, he had a wife, two daughters, and a son. He was confident they would both leave the cave and return to their families. Toni had to tell him she didn’t have one.

Except she did; Rhodey and Pepper and Obie were home waiting for her. After a little more prodding and prompting, Yinsen drew out her stories of her friends. She had been trying so hard not to hope, not to want, but recounting Thanksgiving at the Rhodes household, where she’d tried and miserably failed to make stuffing, made her heart ache to be home. Yinsen told her, “I didn’t think you the woman to have everything and nothing.”

And when Toni locked the little glowing centerpiece into her chest, at this point not even caring she had to be shirtless for easy access to the housing that the reactor would plug into, Yinsen was hardly two steps behind. 3 gigajoules per second was more than enough to power something really, _really_ big, he knew it just as she did. She had no qualms showing him the plans she’d been mocking up late into every night since they’d given her the tools.

The bald man revealed himself days after she’d started making her suit under the guise of missile casings. He had a perpetual scowl and a penchant for monologuing and he knew as well as she did there was no reason to hide himself anymore. And he was paranoid. For good reason; he was keeping the smartest woman in the world as a prisoner and he’d given her all the tools and firepower to blow them all up. And when he tried to take Yinsen from her, she decided she would kill him first and she’d make it painful. She had one day, but she also had all the pieces necessary and the face of her captor.

She had an escape.

Yinsen died in the dim light of a desert cave, bleeding out slowly and painfully having never gotten to say goodbye to his daughters. Toni had bit back the wet scream in her throat and turned her rage on the men who held her captive. She watched the faceless grunts who had kept her there burn or be pierced by bullets ricocheted off her armor. And when she came face-to-face with the head of all this, she watched him be engulfed in the flame from her blasters, then forgot about him as she rocketed off the ground into a freedom she thought she’d never see again.

Yinsen died for her. She never knew his full name, didn’t know the name of his family members, had never gleaned anything that could give those mourning him closure. But he had let her escape and for that she promised change. Yinsen died so the Toni that had been long dormant could rise again.

10 minutes into her flight, the reactor in her chest sputtered, the thrusters died, and she fell 200 feet _hard_. The armor disintegrated in the crash and she was pretty sure she broke a rib in her landing, but she was begrudgingly alive. If there was a god, she was fucking cruel and mad that Antonia Stark wouldn’t _fucking die_. For a while- she wasn’t even sure how long- she laid in the sand, feeling every emotion she’d tried to suppress since the morning until she finally hauled herself to her feet- _for Yinsen._ She wasn’t going to die in the middle of the fucking desert, not after she’d come so far.

The welding jacket became too heavy to carry, too hot to wear, and too precious to leave behind. When she wrapped it around her head, knowing the thin black tank top that was now her last barrier between her and the sun wouldn’t be near enough protection. The time for caring about skin cancer and fashion had long since come and gone, she was going to rescue herself even if it hurt like hell.

She lost track of time stumbling over one sand hill or another, didn’t even really care to know how long it had been since she’d burned, shot, or bludgeoned her way out of that fucking cave. At some point, she heard choppers. At some point, she saw them. Her knees were weak; she was alive. She was alive and someone had found her. When she fell to the sandy ground, she thought distantly of Jimmy who had died for her to live now just as Yinsen had, just as the airman had, just as Wright had, and she threw up a peace sign. If the choppers could see her, they had to know the only ill intentions she bore for them was stripping away their Stark Industries missiles.

Minutes or hours- she didn’t know how long- later and Rhodey was there. She didn’t know how he’d gotten there or why he was crying when he pulled her into his arms, but at least he was there. He said, “No more Fun-vee,” and for the first time in months, she laughed. And then she cried. She was alive and breathing and Colonel James Rhodes had found her.

He told her later that they’d buried an empty casket and that Pepper _grieved. _Rhodeydidn’t leave her side until well after she stole back her weapons with just a few words.

Toni Stark was reborn from the ashes of her soulless, sightless, stupored body-snatcher.

Iron Man was born from those of her oldest friend.


End file.
